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1
Six Shooter
Published
Martin McDonagh's first film, and the clearest place to see where the savage, grief-soaked comedy of In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin began. Brendan Gleeson plays a newly widowed man sharing a train carriage home with a foul-mouthed young stranger, played by Rúaidhrí Conroy, and the journey turns violent fast. It won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short.
At 27 minutes it is long for a short, and it carries a 15 certificate for its profanity and violence, so it suits older viewers rather than a mixed room.
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The Shore
Published
Ciarán Hinds and Conleth Hill play boyhood best friends driven apart as the conflict in Northern Ireland escalated, meeting again 25 years later when Hinds comes home with his grown-up daughter. Terry George's Oscar winner is shot on the County Down coast and balances an old wound with real laughs, which is why it travels: the history matters, but nobody needs a lesson in it to enjoy the film. At 29 minutes it is the longest entry here.
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An Irish Goodbye
Two estranged brothers, one of them with Down syndrome, meet again on the family farm after their mother's death and set about her list of 100 wishes before the place can be sold. Tom Berkeley and Ross White's comedy, led by James Martin and Seamus O'Hara, won both the Oscar for Best Live Action Short and the BAFTA for Best Short Film. It is the rare film about grief that gets bigger laughs as it goes.
In the US it streams free with ads on The Roku Channel; elsewhere it moves between services, so check what is available locally.
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Boogaloo and Graham
Published
Two boys in 1970s Belfast are handed a pair of chicks by their father, name them Boogaloo and Graham, declare themselves vegetarian and start planning a chicken farm, while bigger family news creeps up on them. Michael Lennox's Oscar-nominated short puts childhood logic at the centre of a city better known on screen for its conflict, and it is one of the warmest, funniest films here. Fourteen minutes, and suitable for a family audience.
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New Boy
Published
Adapted from a Roddy Doyle story, Steph Green's Oscar-nominated short follows Joseph, a young African boy, through his first day at an Irish primary school. The teacher's pet and the two kings of the playground will be instantly recognisable to anyone who went to school in Ireland, while brightly coloured flashbacks reveal what Joseph has left behind. In 11 minutes it shows Ireland through a newcomer's eyes without a word of preaching.
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The Crush
Published
Eight-year-old Ardal is in love with his teacher, Ms Purdy, and when she gets engaged to a man he finds entirely unacceptable, he takes his cue from his favourite westerns and challenges the fiancé to a duel. Michael Creagh's Oscar-nominated comedy plays a child's absolute seriousness completely straight, and the ending pays it off. Fifteen minutes, and an easy one to show a mixed age group.
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Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom
Published
Bored of his supermarket job in China, Yu Ming spins a globe, lands on Ireland, studies Irish because it is the official language, and arrives to find that nobody understands him. Daniel O'Hara's 13-minute comedy is a gentle, pointed joke about the gap between the language on paper and the one people speak, with Frank Kelly as the older Irish speaker in a bar who sets him on a better path. It was shortlisted for an Oscar, and it plays in Irish with English subtitles.
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Fluent Dysphasia
Published
O'Hara's follow-up to Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom flips the joke: Stephen Rea wakes after a night on the town fluent in Irish and unable to speak a word of English, with his daughter as his only lifeline. The 16-minute satire is about how hard it can be to live through Irish inside Ireland, and Rea's bewilderment does the work without any lecturing. It was made under the Oscailt scheme for new talent in Irish-language drama, backed by TG4 and the Irish Film Board.
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Lipservice
Published
The Oral Irish exam, seen from the examiner's chair. Seán McGinley plays an examiner in a Dublin school wading through memorised answers delivered with more bravado than comprehension, until a troubled student played by Barry Ward turns out to have real command of the language and no interest at all in the test. Paul Mercier's 20-minute film is a treat for anyone who sat the exam and lands a proper emotional punch. In Irish with English subtitles.
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Give Up Yer Aul Sins
Published
Brown Bag Films animated real recordings of Dublin schoolchildren made by their teacher, Peg Cunningham, in the 1960s, and the star is a small girl retelling the story of John the Baptist entirely in her own words. Cathal Gaffney's four-minute film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short, and it is the clearest proof on this list of how much character lives in an accent.
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Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
Published
A grandmother settles down to tell her sleepy granddaughter Sleeping Beauty and turns it into the revenge of the old fairy left off the christening list for not being glamorous enough, terrifying the child in the process. Nicky Phelan's six-minute animation for Brown Bag Films was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short, and its pitch-black bedtime story is as funny about vanity and age as it is about grannies.
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Fifty Percent Grey
Published
Three minutes long and still Oscar-nominated. A dead soldier wakes in a barren landscape furnished only with televisions, each one offering cheerful information about an infinite future in heaven, purgatory or hell. Ruairí Robinson's bitter little joke is the shortest film here and a sharp way to start any conversation about satire.
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Late Afternoon
Published
Fionnula Flanagan voices Emily, an elderly woman with dementia, who slips from a cup of tea and a biscuit into memories of a childhood beach, a lover's embrace and early motherhood. Louise Bagnall's Cartoon Saloon short, inspired by her two grandmothers, uses animation to show memory flowing the way live action cannot. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short, and at ten minutes it is the gentlest film on the list.
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Retirement Plan
Domhnall Gleeson voices Ray, a man drawing up everything he will finally do once he retires, in John Kelly's seven-minute animation. Deadpan, quick and quietly devastating, it was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2026 after winning the Grand Jury and Audience awards at SXSW, which makes it the newest Oscar contender on this list.
The official free stream is on The New Yorker's YouTube channel and is available in the US and Canada only.
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Second to None
When Herman becomes the world's oldest man, his twin brother Frederick, born a minute later, makes it his life's mission to take the title by any means necessary. Vincent Gallagher's seven-minute stop-motion plays like an old cartoon chase with a lot more blood, and its intricate sets reward a second look. The free stream is on Short of the Week's YouTube channel.
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Fall of the Ibis King
A graduation film from the National Film School in Dublin that premiered at Venice and went on to win the IFTA for Best Animation. Josh O'Caoimh and Mikai Geronimo's ten-minute tragedy follows the villain of a strange opera as the former lead actor returns and the love triangle off stage starts to mirror the one on it. Hand-drawn characters over oil-pastel backgrounds give it a look unlike anything else here.
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Christy
A 16-year-old school dropout lines up a job interview, and when his brother lets him down he lashes out and turns to a friend instead. Brendan Canty drew the story from teenagers he met on Cork's North Side and cast most of it from the street, so the banter sounds exactly right, with Daniel Power as Christy. The 15-minute short inspired Canty's 2025 feature of the same name, which won the Generation 14plus Grand Prix at the Berlinale, so here is the chance to see where it started.
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Bless Me Father
A parishioner in a small Irish town arrives at confession with a secret that directly concerns the priest hearing it. Paul Horan's 16-minute two-hander, with Francis Magee and Phelim Drew, is played out in the cramped confession box yet moves like a thriller, full of reversals, small-town grudges and the dark humour of a place where everyone knows everyone's business. The free stream is on the Omeleto YouTube channel.
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Gridlock
A little girl vanishes from her father's car during a traffic jam on a country road, and suspicion quickly spreads along the line of stranded drivers. Ian Hunt-Duffy set out to make an American-style thriller with a distinctly Irish feel, and Moe Dunford's frantic performance as the father sells it, with Peter Coonan and Steve Wall in a cast where everyone seems to be hiding something. Twenty minutes, on Short of the Week's YouTube channel.
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Ghost Train
Once a year, estranged brothers Michael and Peter return to the derelict fairground where their friend Sam went missing when they were boys. Lee Cronin made this 16-minute horror short before The Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise, and the troubled siblings at the heart of those features are already here, along with a genuinely unnerving grim-reaper ride. Free on Vimeo; not one for younger viewers.
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We Beg to Differ
A documentary about diffing, an underground car scene in Northern Ireland, and the crew who use it to cope with grief and mental health struggles. Ruairí Bradley's 13-minute film opens with the group gathered around a fallen friend and still finds the joy, smoke and craic in what they do, without hiding the danger or the fact that the hobby is illegal outside their yard. It played SXSW, earned a Special Mention at Clermont-Ferrand and an IFTA nomination, and went online free as a Vimeo Staff Pick in 2026.
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